


Bodies Without Bones

by constellationqueen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: It's Soft, M/M, i don't even know what this is, ideally this would be the first episode of season 8 but we all know it won't be, it's cute, it's not smut, they DO have a chat, they're awkward kids who should have a chat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 13:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15708570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellationqueen/pseuds/constellationqueen
Summary: They're heroes, but they're empty. Maybe they just need to talk about it.





	Bodies Without Bones

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for [Meghan](http://ravenvsfox.tumblr.com/), who asked for "Oh shit dude I want to see some wholesome lance Coming To Terms™️ w his sexuality with the help of Keith looking like That and also certified gay advice-giver Shiro, I’m talkin heart to hearts I’m talkin confessions."
> 
> I didn't really write that, but I wrote this with that in mind, so it's along the same vein.

The Garrison’s training room is hot, humid, and not as advanced as the one on the Castle of Lions. But it’s out of the sun, and it’s familiar - the curve of the floor mat, the setup of the weights and the targets on the far end the equipment lockers. None of it’s changed in the years since Keith got kicked out of the Garrison for bad behavior, still perfectly shined and perfectly clean. Of all the things to not fall into disarray during the war, this is certainly an odd room to survive. Maybe Iverson spent so long yelling at them all to shape up and keep the place tidy that the room itself started following orders.

Keith swings his Marmora blade, practicing his precision over and over again by stopping each swing just before it can hit its mark. It’s a skill he’s not that good at - stopping an action when he’s already fully committed. Maybe this will help push muscle memory into place, even if it won’t be able to completely rework Keith’s brain to stop him from barreling headfirst into situations. He’s better at it  _now_ , but he’s still not perfect. He’s best when Lance is around, which is really shit luck on his part, considering that Lance is barely around at all anymore.

Keith hasn’t seen Lance since... since the battle for Earth ended with them all crashing back to the surface, unconscious and in drained lions. But even that wasn’t really...  _seeing_  Lance, and Keith knows that and feels it like a missing bone, something vital that used to be there and hasn’t grown back. But he hasn’t sought Lance out, even though he’s had nothing else to do except work on patrols with his old classmates and hang out with Kosmo. He figures that Lance wants to spend time with his family, and that he’ll come back around when he’s ready. 

He isn’t prepared at all to see Lance now, but the doors open halfway through Keith’s next swing, and Lance steps through. Their eyes lock, and Lance comes to a jarring halt, and Keith’s sword slices clean through the dummy he’d been practicing with. The head and shoulders roll, but Keith doesn’t care. Lance looks... lost. Like he hadn’t come here on purpose but isn’t really startled to find himself here. Startled to find Keith here, maybe, but definitely not himself.

“Hey, man.” Keith lowers his sword and takes a step towards Lance, who seems to tighten up before walking closer. 

“Hey, Keith.” Despite his posture and the empty fog look in his eyes, Lance’s tone is normal. “You can’t sit still either, huh?”

He really can’t - not that he’s ever been able to. But lately... doing anything at a speed that isn’t full tilt leaves him shaking. Everything’s calmer now, with the battle won and clean-up the forefront of everyone’s concerns. But the war is still raging, and Keith is gnawing to get back into the fight again. Every time he takes a step, his body wants to tip forward into a sprint, even with the security of the Garrison trying to reteach him how to take a day off. But it’s hard. Every time something heavy clatters to the ground, or a person walks by too fast, Keith is reaching for his bayard or his knife. Luckily, he hasn’t drawn either weapon on anyone yet, but the fear that he will is what’s pushed him into the training room today.

“Feels like I shouldn’t,” Keith says, watching Lance closely as he comes to a stop a few feet away. There’s a light in his eyes that Keith hasn’t seen in a long time, and he thinks it’s because they’re back on Earth, but the rest of Lance is… wrong. Off-balance and out of sorts and distant. “Do you want to… talk about anything?” He can’t imagine Lance sought him out, seeing as no one knew Keith was in here, except maybe a few people he passed in the hall, but he figures he should extend the offer anyway. “Or train?”

A cocky grin is quick to slap itself onto Lance’s face, which Keith would bet money has more to do with Keith’s extended concern than the training, despite Lance’s next words.

“Eager to have your ass kicked, Keith?”

Maybe he shouldn’t just roll with it. Maybe being a good leader and a good friend means that Keith should insist on talking if he thinks there’s something bothering Lance. But he doesn’t insist. He scoffs. “As if. Besides, I was thinking we could test out that thing Pidge made. Work together, you know?”

Lance tips his head, all confusion. “Pidge made something?”

Oh, right. Lance hasn’t been around anyone in a while, so he wouldn’t have known. Keith so desperately wants to get to the bottom of this, to shake Lance by the front of his shirt if he has to and figure out what’s wrong with him because he’s _worried_ , but he just throws back a grin of his own. “Yeah. Shiro asked if she could make something similar to the training room on the Castle. There was a lot of technobabble, but I think it basically boiled down to Pidge is so busy working on other projects that she had to settle for making a crude device instead of the magnificent thing Shiro was imagining.”

Keith leads Lance over to the gun range, a separate room connected to this one, where the walls are thicker, and guns line the walls instead of the close-range weapons that were in the main room. There’s also a huge container of recycled Galra drones against the far wall, which Pidge has connected to her new training device. Keith doesn’t care about the science of it – all he knows is that if he hits a couple buttons, some of the drones power on. “Pick your weapon, I guess.”

Lance only looks at the wall for a moment before he holds out his hand and stares at his palm. Keith’s about to ask what the hell he’s doing when – “Holy shit.”

“What?” Lance looks up at Keith, fingers closing around the red bayard. “You said pick my weapon. I figured we were using alien weapons since you have your blade. Was I wrong?”

“No, Lance, I just.” He doesn’t know how to phrase this without it coming out sounding like an insult, but the fact of the matter is that he’s fucking astounded. Without his flight suit on, Lance just summoned his bayard, and it _came to him_. Keith’s never managed to do that, nor have any of the other paladins, to his knowledge. He can feel himself smiling, and it’s soft and tender and stupid like the smiles Adam used to give Shiro when he pulled off a reckless trick in a fighter jet. “You and Red must’ve gotten close.”

A hint of a blush seeps into Lance’s cheeks, but instead of preening at the compliment or saying something dumb about having a “way with the ladies,” Lance just looks embarrassed, and that’s… weird. “I guess we’ve been through a lot together,” he says. Keith thinks that’s an understatement.

For a moment, a silence that’s nothing but awkward slips between them. Keith stares at Lance and his bayard and wishes suffering wasn’t a requirement for forging such a deep bond with the lions – and maybe it’s not; maybe things would be different if they hadn’t fallen flat on their faces into being paladins in the middle of a war.

He notices Lance’s eyes on him, too – moving from his sweat-damp shirt up to his neck, which Keith knows is still at least a little flushed from training. Lance is quick to look away, though, when Keith pushes a hand through his hair and gestures with his blade at the device on the wall. “I suppose we should train.” Guns aren’t exactly the most effective in close quarters, but he’s seen Lance produce a pistol before, which is better than a rifle at this distance.

Keith walks over to the wall, and Lance follows. “So… how does it work?” Lance asks, poking at the metal box.

“Pidge explained it really fast, but basically, you flip the switch and you tell the thing how many drones you want, and how fast you want them to move. They start out lighted green, and you only supposed to attack them when they turn purple. Oh, and I guess they also shoot at you when they turn purple.”

“Wait, _what_?”

Keith flips the switch before Lance can freak and figure out a way to back out of this. “How many do you want?”

Still visibly unsure of this new development, Lance shrugs and wiggles his hands, body twisting so that he can look at the container of drones. After a moment he says, “Eight?” Really, it’s not all that different from the simulator on the Castle. You’re not motivated if you’re not in danger, and Altean training equipment never had a problem handing them their asses on a regular basis.

Immediately, eight green-lit drones lift out of the container. Keith sets a speed – not as fast as possible, but pretty damn fast – and together, he and Lance make their way to the center of the room.

They set themselves back to back with space between them. Keith hears Lance’s bayard materialize and feels Lance shift to accommodate the balance of holding a gun. The drones circle the room, taking up the whole space, their patterns unpredictable. Eight is a lot – too many, maybe, but Keith is up for the challenge. “You ready?”

“I got your back, buddy,” Lance says, voice steady. Lance has always been the calculated risk with something to prove to Keith’s reckless dive with nothing to gain.

Out of the corner of his right eye, Keith sees a drone clip to purple, and he lunges.

It’s like a dance. Keith is so focused, as always, ducking and diving, his brain morphing scenarios and pieces of previous battles until he forgets that this is just a training exercise. For the moment, as far as he’s concerned, he and Lance are alone and vulnerable, pinned down with only themselves for backup. He slices through a purple clone and rolls as another shoots at him, but Lance is on it, covering him like he always does, pistol perched in his palm like a kiss or a punch or both. Keith grins wild, and Lance returns it, and this is the most connected they’ve felt in so long it’s as breathtaking as the first time Keith got in a real fighter jet.

And then a drone zips in behind Lance and flips purple. “Lance! Behind you!”

The knowledge that the lasers are at most going to give a little shock flies right past Keith. It doesn’t matter what his brain knows when all he can see is Lance in danger, and he’s too far away to do anything about it.

Lance doesn’t even blink – Keith knows because he’s watching, because all he can see are those deep blue eyes looking back at him, and they’re dead already. There’s nothing there but a hard acceptance that he tripped up, and now he’s got to fix it. This isn’t the Lance who was pushed into war – this is the Lance the war spat out.

The bayard shimmers, and in between one second and the next, Lance’s pistol elongates into a sword, and Lance swings around. Keith’s already running at him, not giving himself even a second to comprehend or ask questions, because the drone is already winding up the energy to fire, and Lance can’t quite figure out where his body is in relation to the sword.

Keith has no idea what order things happen in, because his pulse is in his ears and every nerve ending is in his feet against the floor and all of his concentration is focused on Lance, on his torso, on the freeze-frame jumpy way his breath hitches up the second before everything happens. All Keith knows is that the drone fires, Lance’s blade hits its mark, and Keith’s shoulder connects with the soft spot under Lance’s ribs, and then they’re both on the floor, the shot from the drone impacting the ground away from them.

“Is that all of them?” Keith pants, fingers curled into his palm and pressed against the floor, torso still draped over Lance’s.

His bayard whirs, back to being a gun, and Lance raises his arm to shoot. A second later, metal clatters to the floor. “It is now.”

“Oh, thank god.” After pushing his blade away a couple of inches – which, yeah, probably should have done that before tackling Lance – Keith pushes himself up to his palms. For a moment, he’s suspended over Lance, his hair dangling in a curtain down his forehead and sticking uncomfortably to his nape. They’re both lost for breath, lips parted and teeth bared because they’re feral and alive. Keith notices Lance staring maybe before Lance realizes he’s doing it, and the pressure of Lance’s gaze is a fingernail trailing the curve of his Adam’s apple down to the dip of his collarbone and back up.

The urge to kiss Lance rises with the tidal force of a tsunami he should have seen coming, and Keith pushes hastily away, uncoordinated as he tries to put space between them without making it seem like that’s exactly what he’s doing. He can’t _kiss_ Lance – he’s… Lance isn’t meant for Keith.

He clears his throat, opens his mouth and works his tongue before words collide out from behind his teeth. “So the uh… the sword’s new.”

Lance bounces back. He _always_ bounces back, which is so damn admirable even if it can sometimes be a little annoying. “Pretty cool, right?” There’s that cocky smile curving up Lance’s face, pulling light and mischief into his eyes even when it perhaps doesn’t want to be there. “Allura said it’s an Altean broadsword, and her dad used to wield one.” He sounds proud of himself, like for once in his life he did something that might actually be cool, and on the one hand, Keith is so fucking happy to hear that, he could cry. But on the other hand….

Allura. Right. Of course she knows about this, has known about this. Of course Lance would have told her. It’s cool, it’s neat, it’s a new development in the bayards and in Lance’s fighting style, so it makes sense to tell her. But they’re also dating, probably, or _something_ , so of course Lance would tell her because of that, too. There isn’t another explanation Keith can come up with, and he’s been through every scenario, every instance where he did something different. Inevitably, it seems as if Lance was going to end up with Allura from the start, if only because that’s how it _always_ works.

“Pretty cool,” Keith echoes, and even to his own ears it sounds flat. Something in him has shifted – maybe his bones rearranging to make up for the one that’s missing – and he’s lost all desire to train anymore. He’s hurting and hollow, and maybe a shower and a long pointless walk will fix things.

Keith pushes to his feet and holds out his hand, helping Lance up as well. He holds on a little longer than he should, because he can’t shake this grade school crush and his want to just be around Lance as much as possible. He doesn’t feel balanced when he’s anywhere else.

But Lance lets go, holding out his bayard. They both watch it form back into a sword, nearly as long as Lance is tall. “Do you think you could give me pointers, maybe?”

…What? “Pointers?”

Lance frowns. “Don’t be an ass. I’m asking for help, okay? I haven’t used it since I found out about it because I don’t know how to… use it, really.”

Keith had noticed that, the incongruity between Lance’s body and the sword, two partners out of step in a dance that isn’t meant to be complicated.

He lets out a breath and pushes his hair out of his face, trying to force his body to cool off faster than it seems willing. “Sorry, Lance. I… not today.” He’s running away from this. All he wanted at the start of training was to spend more time with Lance, and now he’s running away because the thought of Lance and Allura together hurts. “Soon, though. Next time.” Keith tries to smile, even while Lance’s face falls. Fuck. “Tomorrow,” he promises, and Lance looks a little better at the clarification. “Same time, alright? I’ll teach you. I just. Can’t right now.”

Lance shrugs, and this time when he smiles, it’s a little softer, but at least he doesn’t look heartbroken anymore. “I’ll be here.”

* * *

 

Post-battle, Keith is a hero, and that’s something he’s never been in his life before Voltron, and it’s something that’s never hit home until now. He’s one fraction of the team that saved Earth from total destruction, and people he doesn’t even know stop him in the hallways to make sure he’s aware that they’re grateful. And Keith… appreciates it, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. There’s too much gratitude for him to hold on to, but he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to put it down. Maybe that’s part of the burden of being a hero – learning to see the horrors you took part in as something good. Learning to understand that the lives you took made sure that the lives around you are still breathing.

Learning to not see yourself as a monster.

Keith doesn’t have a destination in mind. He’s out of the shower, into clothes that aren’t Garrison uniforms, and his knife is tucked away against his back where it feels like home. But Lance was right – Keith can’t sit still.

He rounds a corner, taking a turn he hadn’t meant to take to avoid a large group of civilians walking his way, and Kosmo pops into existence against his side. Keith’s gotten so used to the cosmic wolf showing up unannounced and whenever he wants to that he doesn’t blink, but a couple of nearby Garrison pilots skitter against the wall. A smirk pulls itself across Keith’s mouth, and his hand drops to settle on Kosmo’s head. “You been sleeping all day?” he asks, teasing because he knows the wolf hasn’t been.

There’s a pressure in Keith’s head, the one he always feels when Kosmo’s about to tell him something, and then he’s flooded with something that’s similar to denial as Kosmo tips his head back and blinks up at him.

It’s been this way from the start – or nearly the start. After that first night, with Kosmo curled up against his back, Keith learned that he could more or less communicate with the wolf. It’s why he never named him. But Kosmo doesn’t seem to mind his name new paladin-approved name, even when Keith had asked him about it later. He hasn’t told anyone else about the connection because what’s the point? His mom knows, if only because Keith asked her if it happened to her, too, and she denied it.

They keep walking, Keith still having no destination in mind. He’s been pretty useless lately, shoving himself into patrols and going out with others to deliver supplies to survivors when they can, but right now the Garrison’s focus isn’t on war, it’s on rebuilding. Which means that Pidge, Hunk, Allura, and Shiro are up to their elbows and probably not sleeping, and Lance and Keith don’t have much to do.

Kosmo whines and bumps against his thigh as they walk. “It’s alright,” Keith reassures, fingers curling where they’re buried in Kosmo’s blue fur. “Why don’t you show me where you’ve been today?” It’ll give them both something to do, and it’ll hopefully stop Keith from thinking about how bored he is, and how much he’s maybe starting to miss war right about now.

There’s another pressure in his head before something that feels like a mental shrug, and then Keith is standing in the desert. In the first few seconds, all Keith knows is the blinding sun, the heat soaking into the bare skin of arms that haven’t seen a real sun – _his_ sun – for more than three years. And then his body adjusts, and he starts to take in his surroundings.

Confusion and longing and recognition war within him. “You came here?”

The pressure in Keith’s head this time is comfort, which is the only thing that makes Keith realize how upset he is. This is his home – or what’s left of it. The house had collapsed long ago, in the years between his dad’s death and his expulsion from the Garrison. But the shack had survived those years, had been the last piece connecting Keith to his father and to his life here on Earth. It’s just a pile of wood now, sheltered from the swirling dust by the one wall left standing.

“How’d you even find this place?” How does Kosmo do anything, really? Maybe he tracked Keith’s scent out here, or maybe some cosmic force told him that this place was important. Maybe Kosmo had been privy to Keith’s memories in the abyss, too.

He feels like he should walk into the rubble. There are memories buried here, photographs and documents, items that used to belong to his parents or that he salvaged himself and called his own. But he doesn’t move. “You should bring Mom here,” he tells Kosmo, looking once more at the rubble and then lowering his eyes to his wolf. “This isn’t my home anymore.”

Keith blinks, and they’re back in the Garrison. He recognizes the launch bay of the Atlas immediately, the huge ship taking up most of the room, with the MFEs tucked off to the side. What Keith doesn’t know is why Kosmo brought him here. At least until he spots Shiro across the room. Shiro and Lance. They’re sitting down on a couple of supply crates, Lance’s arms wound tight and uncomfortable around his torso, Shiro looking like the dad he was born to be.

“What are they -?”

Kosmo teleports them, a needle weaving a thread through the fabric of time, and they’re suddenly so much closer to Shiro and Lance – close enough to hear what they’re saying and close enough to be spotted.

He ducks fast behind a stack of supplies, Kosmo winding around him until they’re both tucked up out of sight.

“I can’t tell you what to do, Lance,” Shiro says, and that tender older brother voice throws Keith back to his Garrison days. “It’s your life. It’s a part of _you_. This isn’t about Allura or Keith, or whether you’ve known for twelve years or six months. It’s about what feels right to you.”

Keith frowns, completely lost. What are they talking about? What is Lance supposed to have known? Hot and unwanted, the memory of finding out about Shiro’s sickness curls up Keith’s spine. The situation is similar enough that Keith feels like he’s _there_ , outside the office and confronting Shiro on the tarmac simultaneously. Is Lance…? No. No, he can’t be. Keith won’t accept that.

“But you think we work well together, don’t you?” Lance asks, something in his voice that might be hopeful or defiant or shy or all three. The question slingshots Keith’s thoughts out of orbit, leaving him spinning in space. Work well? So he’s not sick then, probably. Not dying. That’s… such a relief that Keith feels it physically.

Shiro sighs, and for a long moment, Keith is left in the silence, staring across the room at parts of Atlas and grey walls and boxes and boxes and boxes. Finally, Shiro pulls in a breath. “There’s a reason you pilot the red lion, Lance. You and Keith balance each other in ways the others just don’t. You’re all a support system, and you’re a team who’s learned to work in unison, but there’s a reason the red and black lions form Voltron’s most powerful wings. There’s a reason the red lion is Voltron’s right hand.”

“Are you saying that Keith and I are destined to be together or something?”

Whoa _what_? What the – where the fuck is that coming from? Keith looks at Kosmo, eyes wide, but of course the space wolf only tips his head a little to the side and stares unblinkingly back. There’s no emotion from him this time.

“No.” Shiro sounds like he’s giving Lance a weird look, and that judgement radiates all the way over to where Keith is crouching, making him want to laugh. “I’m saying that you two are close. That you have a bond. What you do with that bond is up to you.”

The space around them falls quiet again, the only sound a shift of clothing and a soft sigh that’s probably Lance’s. “Okay.” Definitely Lance. “Thanks for listening, Shiro.”

“I’m glad you felt you could trust me enough to tell me.” Shiro’s voice sounds different when he smiles – sounds just like that.

“Heh. Yeah.”

Keith smiles at that while he stares at his nothing, the sound of Lance’s awkward closing to the conversation fuzzing up his head. Why the fuck is he so cute and why the fuck can’t Keith get over him?

After a weirdly spaced moment, there’s a shift, and then a pair of footsteps starts walking away with a tempo that’s purposeful – not rushing, but still brisk. The problem is that’s it’s only one pair.

A door closes, and Shiro says, “Keith,” in his disapproving dad voice. Of course, Kosmo chooses that moment to pop off somewhere else, leaving Keith to face down Shiro’s frown alone. He pushes to his feet and folds his arms over his chest, defensive before he’s even heard an accusation. “Listen, Kosmo brought me here. I didn’t ask him to. I didn’t know Lance was here. I couldn’t just leave once I _was_ here. I -”

Shiro holds up a hand, and Keith falls silent. “I know. I just need to make sure you’re not going to confront Lance about this.”

“I don’t even know what you guys were talking about,” Keith says, because he doesn’t know without thinking about it, and thinking about it sounds dangerous – like it could get him hurt just as fast as a dull knife.

One of Shiro’s eyebrows pulls up perfectly in the middle. “Don’t you?”

Ah, fuck. He’s going to make Keith think about this. About the mix of emotion when Lance was asking Shiro’s opinion on their dynamic, about the way the word “destined” sounded when it spilled out of Lance’s mouth, about the blush on his cheeks that Keith can so perfectly place even though he didn’t see it when Lance couldn’t figure out what to say to Shiro thanking him for honesty and trust.

Keith’s arms uncross, hands dangling useless and awkward at his sides. His head tips down, though his eyes stay trained on Shiro, and he worries his lip between his teeth before he asks, “Does he… does he like me?” Oh, god, and Keith has worked so fucking hard his whole life to hide the insecurity that shoves its way to the front of his throat, packing itself into those words like punches.

“You two have a lot more in common than either of you seem to realize,” is all Shiro says, and his expression is soft. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, Keith. But just let him come out to you at his own pace.”

And just like that, Keith’s frown is back in place, hands shoving themselves into his pockets. “I’m not going to force him to do that, Shiro. I’m not that much of a fucking dick. The fuck? It’s not like I think that just because I’m gay it means I can push people out myself.”

“Keith. Keith, oh my god, calm down.” Shiro drags his hand down his face, looking out at Keith from over the top of his fingers before he drops his hand again. “All I’m saying is that he might come out to you tomorrow or next week or never, and you just need to be okay with the ‘never’ part if that’s what he decides he wants.”

“I…” Keith deflates again. “I know.” Because in the end it comes down to Lance’s comfort and Keith’s desire, and the former is always going to come first for Keith. Always.

Shiro smiles, and his everything softens around it. “I know you do.”

* * *

 

Waiting for Lance in the training room feels like a risk on Keith’s part, which is so fucking stupid, but his anxiety is all-consuming and so physically present that his stomach hurts and it’s hard to breathe through each of the positions he puts himself in to stretch and remind his body for the millionth time how it feels to hold a sword.

Lance _likes_ him. Keith had thought Lance and Allura were already an item, here to find out that Lance likes guys, too.

And how goddamn stupid of them both to not say a thing to each other about it while stuck in the void of space for several years. Looking back, there were so many times that Keith could have said something, _should_ have said something. But the moments always went on too long, and Lance either ruined them with his insecure brand of cockiness, or Keith ruined them by building his walls right back up again.

The door opens. Lance walks in with a purpose, though the mask he’s wearing is one that Keith has unfortunately become familiar with. It’s the “everything is shit but I’ll make a joke so people don’t worry about me” face, and Keith hates it. He admires the selflessness and the resilience, but he hates it.

“Hey, man,” Lance says, rolling his shoulders as he shrugs out of his jacket and summons his bayard. Keith still thinks that’s fucking neat, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little jealous.

After a small flip of his blade, Keith tucks the knife away and moves towards Lance. “Hey. Ready to practice?”

Lance tips one shoulder up and gives Keith a wicked grin. “Eh. I guess I can put in some effort today. Show off these guns. Or, well… swords, I guess.” As he says it, the bayard shimmers and elongates, the large red broadsword from yesterday dominating the room.

Down to business then. Probably for the best, considering, well, yesterday. Keith knows things he shouldn’t know now, and while that makes him near giddy with relief, it also makes him anxious as fuck that he’s going to slip up somewhere and spill what he knows all over the floor. So the plan is to focus on training, to keep his mind occupied on helping Lance succeed instead of on… Lance in general.

“How’s the weight of it, then?” he asks, reaching out to adjust Lance’s grip. “It’s a broad sword, so you’ll need to use two hands. You tend to be right-hand dominant, so right hand on top, left on the bottom.”

“Two hands? It’s pretty light.” Despite his protests, Lance leaves his hands where Keith puts them.

“Oh, well that’s good, at least. Most broadswords are heavy. You still need two hands, though. Because it’s long and double-edged, you need one hand for power and the other for manipulating the blade, like,” he thinks he knows what he’s talking about, “the motor and rudder on a boat. When you get good with two hands, we can work on a one-handed grip.”

Lance hums and shifts his hands around, adjusting his grip on the pommel until he’s comfortable. “That makes sense. Okay, so now what?”

Keith talks him through it, everything from the correct stance to how much of Lance’s weight should be on which foot to provide maximum range and stability. It’s slow-going for both of them – for Keith because it’s been so long since he’s had to think about the technical side of wielding a sword, and for Lance because he’s never done it before. Swords are an extension of Keith’s body in the way guns are an extension of Lance’s, but the bayard wouldn’t have turned into a sword if it didn’t think Lance was capable of using it.

The problem with the basics taking ages to teach and learn is that it’s exhausting, with minimal signs of improvement, and it doesn’t take long for Lance to start losing focus. Keith starts noticing it when he has to repeat himself more than once just to get Lance to do one thing, and then Keith’s frustration builds, and his patience gets shorter, a fuse burning itself to an explosion, until he finally has to stop before he ruins this.

He backs away, frustrated, and has to physically stop himself from yelling by gritting his teeth and clenching his stomach muscles. But there’s just no stopping the snap in his voice, the hidden blade cutting up his mouth when he says, “What’s wrong with you today?”

“I like guys,” Lance blurts, almost before Keith finishes speaking, as if the words had been rattling behind his teeth, trying to break free from the moment Lance walked in.

Keith’s fuse fizzles out, and his whole body just sort of… freezes. Not even his prior knowledge gained via snooping space wolf can stop him from blinking in surprise, his stance shifting to allow for him to cross his arms, but he shuts the action down. He’s not going to build walls up, not when Lance is coming out to him and – _holy shit Lance is coming out to him_.

“I mean, I don’t _only_ like guys. Girls are super cool, too, and no way would I have kept flirting with them if I hadn’t like… _wanted_ their attention, you know? Or maybe that’s just something I thought I wanted? Because I mean, now that I have Allura’s attention I don’t really want it.” The introspection doesn’t derail Lance at all, and it only sticks around long enough to pull Keith off his balance before Lance is going off again.

“I like _you_ , Keith. Not just guys as a concept but you.” Here Lance blushes, and Keith watches, enraptured, as the rosy glow spreads across Lance’s face. He doesn’t want to put a halt to this just yet, curious what all Lance will tell him if Keith doesn’t interrupt. “I mean, I’ve liked other guys before, I guess. But I’ve liked you for a long time, and no one else that I liked ever seemed to be… you? I used to hate myself for it, you know. Because you didn’t notice me, and you just had this stupid fucking attitude, and it was obvious that you were close to Shiro. Like I was jealous of you big time, but I never wanted to _be_ you, I just wanted to be _with_ you, so I made up some stupid rivalry so that none of my friends would figure it out. I didn’t know how to tell anyone, and I didn’t – it was all just _so dumb_. And then space happened and you were there and you were brilliant and abrasive, but the longer we were together the more obvious it became that my crush on you wasn’t gone, and you’re really intimidating and you’re kind of scaring me right now with how quiet you’re being so please say something.” Despite saying that, it still looks like it takes a lot of effort for Lance to stop talking, his body now thrumming with an energy that says he’s seconds away from either bolting or – actually, probably just bolting.

So Keith smiles. “I like you, too.” He tries to shrug it off, but there’s something so very _grade school_ about the words “I like you” that it’s impossible for Keith to not feel a little giddy when he says them. “For the record, I don’t like girls. And I guess aside from a few celebrity crushes, I haven’t thought about liking anyone else.” Which is _also_ a weird thing to say, but Lance deserves to hear it, even if the words feel awkward and uncomfortable on his tongue, like _sannakji_ only moments after it’s been served.

For a moment, Lance just stares at him. “Oh.” He frowns, which makes Keith’s stomach drop right to the floor, but then he grins, and so much of Keith’s blood rushes to supply the blush on his face that he feels dizzy for a moment. “Guess we’re both kind of dumb then, huh? For not… just talking about it.”

Keith scoffs. “As if either of us are the type of person to just talk things over.”

“Yeah… we should work on that.”

“Probably.”

Lance shifts on his feet and looks around the room. When he looks back, his eyes are focused, the blue in his irises dark and glittering like the middle of a star-dotted deep space. “So… how come you never brought it up?”

Oh boy. “I thought you were dating Allura,” he admits.

“Wait, what? Really?” Lance’s face is having a war with his emotions, not quite sure which to settle on. “You thought I was…?” Keith’s blush flares so much he’s afraid it’ll cement itself permanently to his face, because _obviously_ he was wrong, and Lance is going to – yep, Lance is laughing. But it’s such a giddy, delighted sound that Keith can’t help but laugh a little too, even when Lance pulls his hands away to cover his eyes and hold in his stomach.

“Yeah, _okay_ , it’s not that funny,” Keith tries, feeling self-conscious now. Yeah, sure, he should have known better. Maybe. No, fuck that, how was he supposed to know? “Lance, oh my god, shut up.”

Lance’s laugh hiccups, and when he drops his hand from his eyes, there are tears flowing freely over the smile on his cheeks. “Oh. Oh, wow, we’re messes,” he says. “Way to be heteronormative, Keith.”

A frown takes over Keith’s expression, but the blush is still there. Lance is right. About a lot of things, usually. Keith’s not going to tell him that. Not… right now, at least. He looks at Lance’s hands expectantly, the bayard back in its original form. “Are you more focused now that that’s… been said?” He’s not good at this. Friendships are hard enough, but admitting to _liking_ someone? What the fuck is he even supposed to _do_ with that? “You were paying attention, right? Use your sword. I want to see what you remember.”

“Oh, I bet you do.” Lance winks and shoots finger guns at him, which makes Keith roll his eyes and shove at Lance’s shoulder. But Lance just laughs and grabs Keith’s wrist, pulling him in until they’re inches away, breaths away. “Kiss me first?”

“You haven’t earned that yet.” But Keith’s caught. He’ll be the first to admit it. He could break Lance’s hold, but why bother when Lance is warm and soft and looking at him with pouty lips and eyes that are open waters.

“Aw, c’mon. It’s not fun without a little foreplay.”

Keith shoves at Lance’s shoulder again, backing him up until he knocks into the wall, until there’s something solid in the equation to keep them both from sliding to the floor. “You’re the fucking worst,” he breathes, and then catches Lance by the jaw and pulls him in for a kiss.

It feels like everything he’s missed his whole life. That hollow space, that missing bone, fills in and grows back with every second their lips touch, and it doesn’t hurt the way he imaged it might – it’s just a huge fucking relief. He grabs onto Lance’s shirt and pushes his fingers into Lance’s hair, and his whole body jolts when Lance touches him back, fingers kneading at Keith’s sides, his hips, pulling him in a breath closer.

Keith pushes and Lance pushes back, and it’s a fight to get as close as possible and to keep themselves from getting too close too fast. It’s hotter than he thought it would be, and neither of them can fucking _shut up_ in between motions. Each slide of Lance’s fingers is the first time Keith’s felt truly alive, and each tug to Lance’s hair is an arched back and biting teeth and the best, most desperate noise in the whole world.

It’s a surprise to Keith when he pulls away first, Lance’s whine of complaint perfectly echoing in the space around them and perfectly mirrored on Keith’s lips, but someone had to do it before they ended up on the floor, half undressed, to be found by some poor cadet. “I always knew that would be a bad idea,” he murmurs, kissing down Lance’s neck so that the words don’t come off as a bad declaration. “Never want to stop kissing you, now.”

Lance laughs, and his grip tightens. “I’m not going to complain.”

“Oh, no. You’re not getting out of training that easy.” As much as Keith would love to throw the rest of the day’s productive energy at learning everything there is to know about Lance and his body, that’s just not going to happen. It’s too fast, too rushed, and it’s going to end in as sloppy of a crash as the first time Keith got emotional in the cockpit of a fighter. If this is going to be something that _works_ , they’re both going to have to slow down.

“But Keeeeeith,” Lance whines, body going lax enough in complaint that Keith has to decide whether to catch him or let him fall. He chooses the former.

Keith grunts, pushing Lance up by the shoulders until he’s more or less vertical. “Would you stop being such a baby? It’s not like we’re going to war tomorrow. Do you know how long we have to kiss each other now? _So long_ , Lance. Which means that you can give me another hour or two of your time until you get the basics right.”

Lance groans, and whines, and groans a little more just to be dramatic, but he does put his weight on his own two feet and slips past Keith to the center of the room. “Teach me then, fearless leader,” he says, taking up the fighting stance in a way that’s _almost_ perfect. Keith can’t not walk over and correct it immediately, because really, as great as Lance already is, Keith knows he has it in him to be even better.


End file.
